The Dublin Community Blog

I’m happy to post this guest article written by my friend, Melanie. Melanie has many years of experience in the arts and particularly in acting and she offers unique insight into the Dublin theatre scene.

Tom Creed, originally from Cork, has been living and working as a freelance theatre director in Dublin since 2006. Well known in the theatre community as a young and prodigious talent, his work is at once prolific and varied. Beginning his theatre work in Cork, he then trained with Rough Magic’s SEEDS programme, which seeks to identify and develop young theatrical talent. He got what he calls the ‘golden ticket’; he was made an Associate Director of the company, which allows him to work under their well established banner as well as pursuing some of his own work.

His latest departure is Una Santa Oscura, a theatrical staging of the music of Ian Wilson, inspired by the life of 12th century Christian visionary Hildegard of Bingen. Presented at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin’s Temple Bar, Tom is adamant that there’ll be no nuns on stage! Rather it’s an interpretation of a cloistered day interrupted by ecstatic visions, brought to life in a contemporary apartment setting and performed by a single musician, violinist Ioana Pectu-Colan. Although he wouldn’t call himself religious, Tom is intrigued by the collision of the sacred and profane and found himself fascinated by the life of this extraordinary proto-feminist, fundamentalist Christian nun who was famed in her own lifetime as a composer of hymns, expositor of theology and receiver of visions.

While many young creatives veer straight towards the apparent glitz and glam of film and TV, Tom Creed was drawn to the theatre for the pure ‘liveness’ of it. ‘It’s useful,’ he says, ‘it’s good to be made to imagine things. It helps us to think.’ His influences are wide and far reaching, including the visual arts and ‘dead Russian people’ but he is interested in psychology and substance. His great passion is creating theatre for the 21st century and while this show will be heavy on the use of the digital arts, he doesn’t feel that multimedia is always necessary to be cutting edge or contemporary.

Life in Dublin for the director revolves around the Project Arts Centre, which despite a radical cut in funding from the Arts Council recently (‘disproportionate’ according to Tom), continues to be a hub of a lively, creative community. Certainly, the day I popped in to interview Tom, there was at least five notable theatre makers at laptops using the foyer as a makeshift office. ‘It’s a home for emerging and established practitioners and [the work it does] is invaluable.’

The Project Arts Centre, as well as many other established arts practitioners and venues, has felt the cold, hard reality of recession lately. I asked Tom whether he was personally affected by the rough winds of change. ‘I feel quite alive at the moment,’ he responded, shrugging his shoulders ‘and it doesn’t feel like people are stopping and it feels like people are having to be resourceful.’ And to the perennial question of whether theatre can survive at all, Tom gives a snort of derision. ‘Audiences are coming to see work. There’s a need for it among people and it’s an opportunity to bring people together. And it’s not very expensive. Times like this give artists an opportunity to reaffirm what they’re there for.’

(Una Santa Oscura by Ian Wilson, directed by Tom Creed, design by Ciaran O’Melia runs at Project Arts Centre, Theatre Upstairs from the 4th to the 6th of March 2010.)

Melanie Clark Pullen is an actor and writer living in Ireland. She lives by the sea with her husband and daughter and ekes out a living from the arts. She’s passionate about theatre, film, literature, creativity, spirituality and long evenings spent with good friends over food and a nice Chilean Merlot.